The Welches are generous with Obama and give him an A for leadership, though they may revise this if he fails to champion unpopular but necessary issues. Here is a comment on the four issues the Welches grade Obama on.
Vision and Team-Building
The Welches rightly argue that Obama has the vision “ ‘thing’ without which a person simply cannot lead.” Obama’s vision ranges from the Economy to the Environment passing through Social issues and Foreign Policy.
While an expression of Obama’s cogent vision on Foreign Policy is more recent, we know he has the “vision thing” because Obama is an excellent communicator, both in the technique and the approachability. Not only he has addressed domestic constituencies, he has also succeeded with foreign stakeholders. Quite something.
Next, the Welch’s turn to Obama’s competence in team-building. They give him credit for folding in an egotistic team with high potential for derailment.
The Welches are right. This initial team is a fractious one. Take Larry Summers, for instance. Because he is talented he has been in demanding positions. Yet, wherever he has been he has rubbed people the wrong way, from the World Bank to Harvard.
Perhaps a different question should be asked, are there not equally competent people with a higher team working proclivity that the ones that Obama has chosen? This is not an idle question because it is nurtured in the Obama-tension that surprises us.
It is to America’s credit, besides to Obama’s own, that he became President of the USA. But it still does not cease to surprise us a little. Perhaps it is too soon and it will go away. But perhaps Obama senses this and feels that he needed to put some easily recognizable faces in his team to make it more credible.
Surely Obama could have chosen a lower-key team. Why didn’t he? Because he does not believe they would be as competent, or because they would not be as credible? In which case, we would have to ask, who with does Obama want to communicate?
It could well be that by inviting the abrasive individuals in his administration Obama aimed at dispelling doubts among those who are concerned about his own weaknesses. Whatever the reason, individuals like Larry Summers and Hillary Clinton are a risk to the credibility of Obama’s message of hope bred in solidarity.
Speed and Authenticity
Next, the Welch’s turn to Obama’s “Speed” another fundamental ingredient to an effective CEO.
The challenges were many and the Welches believe that Obama may have initially moved on too many fronts, to the point of distracting attention on the “Big thing” which, no doubt, is the sad state of the economy.
Indeed, we saw some time spent on the ritual of signing-off a bill in support of equal pay for women. That may have been distracting, but it did not take long, and it was necessary. Had Obama not dedicated enough attention to issues like these he would have conveyed the impression that it was business as usual and we all know where that led us.
Authenticity is another issue altogether. There is a hint in the Welch’s analysis that Obama may not come across as authentic as is desirable for a leader, and that; fortunately, his wife makes up for that.
It may well be that it is only a question of perception from the viewpoint of the Welch’s dinner party; but remember Obama’s choice of some abrasive individuals for his team? Negative perceptions add up, and erode a leader’s credibility. It could well be that Obama is not generally perceived as authentic enough and that it is too early to say so bluntly. But it may pile up and then be released on him with the force of an avalanche when he fails the first time, which he will.The Welches do not mention the word charisma at all in the analysis of Obama as a leader. In a kind response to my comment Suzy Welch later clarified that “Obama's definitely charismatic” and suggested that this perception was implicit in their claim that Obama was a great communicator. Fair enough, but charisma is not the same as authenticity and this begs a different question: How inauthentic may an otherwise excellent communicator be before he is said to be lacking in charisma? I would say very little. If Obama were not perceived as authentic enough, he could hardly be seen as charismatic, despite his eloquence.
We know that charisma is a necessary quality for effectiveness in a leader because charisma awakens the level of affection among the followers which will lead them to forgive, even when the leader fails, as sometimes our Saints do; not because the Saints, or our leaders, are not on our side; but because the strength of the devilish creatures they must contend with may occasionally be just too much for them to succeed.
We do not cease to love our leader, nor our Saints, when they fail us; because we love them we forgive them. Take President Lula for instance. But will people cease to love Obama? No, it is unlikely that they will, because Obama, like Lula, are both Servant leaders. Their style of leadership is anchored in trust and in helping hands rather than in stark competitiveness. That style is unsettling to those in business circles and to them appears to be inauthentic, but it is not.
Markides tells us in Fast Second that, for business to deliver an innovation, it takes transforming what may not be much more than a good idea into something that people will want to pay for at a price that business can make a profit on. This is why, Markides argues, that the company that takes a radical innovation to the market is seldom the one that developed the product in the first place. This happens because the company that developed the product frequently lacks the organizational skills that it takes to transform that product from the best possible into an affordable one and to market it and perhaps even support it after sales, Apple’s iPod and iPhone excepted.
